Mod10: Informal Learning Environments

10.1 Market Opportunity Statement

Most ETEC 522 students are associated with some dimension of the formal education system, so hopefully it will be refreshing to explore an important emerging market that encompasses the learning technology opportunities complementary to, and potentially better integrated with, schools and learning institutions.

Traditionally, successful learning has always been an unspoken partnership between the school, the home and the community. Schools reach out in a formal way into homes and community through homework and field trips, and the home and community reach into schools more haphazardly in terms of the places and events that populate the bulk of a learner’s waking hours. The cross-fertilization is strong but largely accidental; the only common thread has been the learner’s experience.

The Internet is beginning to create another thread. For the home, there are a set of home-schooling companies like E-Sylvan, Scholastic and Club Penguin that are providing applications and environments that can bridge from the school experience to the home. Within the community, there are increasing abilities for libraries, museums, science centres, parks and even malls to offer tangibly constructive and personalized learning opportunities. The potentials of a web-based student e-portfolio, for example, provide the means to integrate all of these experiences.

This a barely emergent market, without many exemplars, so the objective of the analysis might be explore the practical, pedagogical, political and social implications of this direction, or to explore the existing domain of informal learning technologies with an eye to other directions it could go.